Speech at the East Coast CARP Workshop
Hyo Jin Moon August 31, 1987 French Creek State Park, Pennsylvania Excerpts
I want to talk about how we can become true CARP members. People have an innate desire to seek challenge, to be successful, to want to possess things. We have such motivation because ultimately we hope to reach God's love. The greatest thing is God. God is the Creator of the universe and the essence of all the value that exists in the universe. But since we have been separated from God, we have lost awareness of His existence and wholeness. That's why we can easily pursue individualistic, detailed things in our lives. But, ultimately, we were created with the desire to possess the love of God. That is what we want to succeed in.
We're children of God, right? If you are children of God, you want to receive your parents' love. Without it, you won't understand what love is. Parents rarely have to bribe or punch their children in order to make them obey them. Within true love, the child wants to do what the parents say, naturally. He doesn't have to be forced.
True Excitement
We all have the greatest gift, which is that we all desire give and take. Give and take is how love grows. Through give and take, you grow spiritually and reach a standard of knowing God's existence and the essence of God, which is true love. Father said true love is not just horizontal love, nor is it just vertical love. Horizontal and vertical love together are like a roundness. The center of that is true love.
Can God be happy all alone? I don't think so. You cannot be happy all on your own. Your happiness will not just perpetuate itself. Many people may say, "I'm happy. I'm content with my lifestyle." They like going to discotheques, dating, and driving a fast car -- that's exciting to them. But that happiness is short-lived. The only true happiness we can feel is within the domain of God, because only there can we inherit eternal love.
Natural excitement can come from looking at a star, at the Milky Way, at anything -- with God's perspective. When I see powerful things, I get excited and joyful, totally exhilarated.
As you should all know by now, God is not a happy God. He is a suffering God. In a sense, through our own suffering, we come to understand God more. If you really want to be a leader and a participant in this restorational time period, you have to grow. Growth toward becoming a better person entails many difficulties, perhaps in your relationships with your peers. You have to understand the other person, and you have to understand yourself, too. Coming to such awareness is not easy; it is real suffering. Your suffering in itself gives you a qualification to be a leader.
CARP members have to be different from other people. We must have an absolute standard and a 100- percent connection with God and True Parents. Without that, it doesn't work. We must understand Father. In the Unification Church, it's obvious we must totally unite with Father because we are Father's body. We're not separate. We might be different organs in his body, but we are within his body. When a cell denies the whole, that's a cancer cell. You have to connect 100 percent to the absolute standard.
How can you do that? Fallen human beings have the responsibility to not only cut off from Satan; they have an original responsibility, too. There was responsibility in the original world, but you haven't reached that stage yet. Just cutting off from fallen desires is not the end. After you've cut off, that's when your true responsibility begins. God cannot do your responsibility for you. You have to do it. Why did God make it like that? Because you are to be His sons and daughters. You are not animals. An animal doesn't have responsibility.
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